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CAYTON'S WEEKLY
PRICE FIVE CENTS
CAYTON'S WEEKLY
Published every Saturday at Seattle, Washington,
U. S. A.
In the interest of equal rights and equal justice to
all men and for "all men up."
A publication of general information, but in
the main voicing the sentiments of the Colored
Citizens.
It is open to the towns and communities of the
state of Washington to air their public grienvances.
Social and church notices are solicited for pub
lication and will be handled according to the rules
of journalism.
Subscription $2 per year in advance. Special
rates made to clubs and societies.
HORACE ROSCOE CAYTON. .Editor and Publisher
Office, 613 Pacific Blk. Telephone Main 24.
SEATTLE'S STREET CAR STRIKE
Not for more money nor for shorter
hours, but for the official recognition of
the union did the sixteen hundred Seattle
street car men strike and thereby demoral
ize the traffic and traveling conditions of
the entire city. The public should con
sider well this situation before giving the
strikers any moral support.
If men are under-paid and over-worked
for what they are paid to do, they have
just cause for complaint and should get
the complete moral support of all patriotic
citizens, but to quit work in a body be
cause those paying the wages refuse to
permit their walking-disturber, better
known as delegate, to dictate to them as to
whom they shall employ to perform the
work they have to do, is absolutely ridicu
lous. Such would be taking the rights and
prerogatives completely away from the em
ployer and delegating them to the employe.
In other words, who pays the money has
no say as to who does the work. No more
arbitrary and pernicious precedent could
be established than this and the public, as
said above, should be slow to sympathize or
in anyway recognize it.
The principle underlying organized la
bor is not wholly or even partially con
demned by us nor is organized capital. If,
however, each of them would be just and
fair and, "do unto others as you'd have
them do to you," there would be no need
of either organization. Capital first ex
torted from its laborers and when its la
borers organized and hit back then the two
got their heads together in most instances,
and extorted from the consumer and divided
the swag.
Investments are entitled to legitimate
profits and labor is entitled to a reason
able wage, but its highway robbery for the
two to combine and systematically bleed
the man between. Its an undeniable fact
that all over this country the rich is getting
richer and the poor getting poorer and
the most of the strikes that are daily oc
curring just now are due to the extortion
ate prices the trusts have unjustly imposed
upon the people by raising the prices of
the necessities of life. Organized labor's
complaint against this and its demand for
higher wages are often granted, but the
complaints of the man between go un
heeded. But all this is only incidental to
the strike for official recognition of the
union, which we reiterate is not only ty
ranical, but damnable and should receive
no moral support from the great rank and
file of this community.
WHAT OF THE NEGRO
In another column hereof is reproduced
a letter from a white man, who advocates
the deportation of the black folks of this
country, and giving his reasons therefor.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, SATURDAY, JULY 21, 1917
In still another column is reproduced an
editorial from the Portland Advocate, which
is published by a black man, and giving his
objections to the idea. Both of these men
have spoken well and said many things that
are worthy of much consideration. While
the Advocate stated facts, yet it did not an
swer the writer's argument. However
humane, just and right it may be to deport
the black folk from this country, the
scheme is absolutely impossible for it would
bankrupt the government to reimburse the
colored for the property and valuables they
own in this country and to at the same
time send twelve million to a foreign
country, and aside from the monetary con
sideration, it would require the presence of
two million white soldiers to enforce the
work, even though the money was forth
coming. The Advocate is correct in its
alegation that the black folk are here to
stay, and that there will never be any de
portation scheme attempted, but as un
adulterated colored folk we take issue with
the Advocate, and make the prediction that
they are going and going very fast. Mr.
Seaberg asks: "Is this nation to be half
white and half black or is it to be mu
latto?" In the United States there are up
wards of five million part white and black
folks and the mixture is rapidly on the in
crease. To be more definite, the "colored
people" in the United States are almost
equally divided between black and tans
and blacks. At the close of the war there
were about 900,000 mixed bloods against
three million blacks, about thirty per cent,
but in the course of fifty years the per cent
of mixed bloods had increased to fully fifty.
A long story short, the black folk are to
stay as part black and part white, and
there is no doubt but that the future people
of this country will be a complete mixture
of all the races and classes now living here,
and, if you please, a race like unto the
Latins of Europe. America is doomed to
be a one-race nation, which will be made
up of the bloods of all nations. For either
the black man or the white man to worry
over such dreams as presented by Mr. Sea
berg is wasted energy for whatever is to
be wil be. Tbe black folks are here and
apparently here to say, but after many
changes and alterations, and the same will
be true of^the white folks. Because the
white folks are temporarily in the majority
is no excuse for them using the brute and
savage for c to vent their feelings of op
position to the black folks, for not picking
up voluntarily and leaving here, which
thing should no more be expected of the
blacks than of the whites. As the editor
of this paper has repeatedly said in these
columns as well as from the rostrum, its
absolutely out of the question to build up
a white and a black race in the same ter
ritory, the one or the other must fall, and
its always the weaker that goes to the
wall. The black folks of the United
States, in the opinion of the writer, will
either be absorbed by the whites or killed
by them, for they (the blacks) will not
stand for deportation. The absorbtion pro
cess is already far under headway and the
killing process is only making haste very
slowly.
Solomon, so it is said, was the wisest
man, and he should have been, for did he
not have a thousand wives and each one of
them told him something new every day.
WILL ANARCHY PREVAIL?
These are exciting days in Seattle with
strike-breakers trying to work and strikers
trying to prevent them from working, and
if riot and blood shed is not the outcome of
the intense excitement that prevails from
morning till night then we will be mightily
surprised. As you watch the hundreds and
sometimes thousands of excited men and
boys gather about the strike-breakers of
the express companies, while they make
their deliveries to the various business
houses, in a more or less threatening atti
tude and often hurling missels at the men,
and then remember that the strike-breakers
have orders to shoot, and to shoot to kill,
if any one lays hands on them, its easy to
realize and understand that its only a ques
tion of a short time, unless an adjustment
is made, before the streets of Seattle will
be drenched with blood and, perhaps, like
in East St. Louis, a general confligration in
the city follow.. The struggle in Seattle is
but another clash of organized labor and
capital with the latter leaning on unor
ganized labor to back up its contentions.
Of course in this case it is white men pitted
against white men, while in East St. Louis
is was white men pited against black men,
and in this latter case sympathy is always
with the white men right or wrong, but the
excitement of brow-beating the strike
breakers, as it has proceeded in Seattle,
can not go on much longer before a fatal
clash will follow and, once begun there is
no telling when and where it will end.
The authorities are foolishly allowing these
excited men and boys to disturb the streets
and work the citizens up to a state of
frenzy, and each day it has grown more
bold and defiant, and it may be but to
morrow when the authorities will be
powerless to control the situation. The
whole matter ought to be taken in hand
now, yea it should have been done some
three or four days ago, and the strikers
prevented from rushing about the city in
auto trucks by the multiplied hundreds
and assuming a war-like attitude, which, as
said above, can but result in a bloody riot
sooner or later. All of this will danger
ously disturb the industrial conditions of
Seattle and the Puget Sound country, and
the mushroom prosperity that had appar
ently rested in the city for a moment, com
paratively speaking, will take the winps of
the morning, and will vanish just as com
pletely as did Banquos' ghost. As to the
dispute between the express companies and
the drivers we know nothing and care less,
but nothing is accomplished by turning the
city over to maddened throngs, whose
minds, under the excitement of the mo
ment, completely lose their balance wheels.
We suggest as a remedy for the whole con
troversy that the express companies
up the idea of making deliveries and allow
the patrons of their concerns a certain
amount to call in person for their parcels.
This would eliminate the strikers as well
as the strikebreakers, which would save the
city from more days of excitement and
probable riot and blood-shed.
IS CITY OWNERSHIP HERE?
It is now being bruted about the streets
that, the majority stock holders of the
street car system of Seattle engineered the
present strike on its system, with the view
of forcing the city to take over its plant
VOL. 2, No. 6